Childcare - Hammer style

The Nanny (1965)

Second movie from the Hammer Collection is a nice little thriller. Bette Davis must have liked her role in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) as she ended up playing creepy old women quite a few times after that. On this one she plays a nanny in a family who have lost their young daughter. The father is too busy to give any time for the family and the mother is devastated by the loss of her daughter. The son of the family is released from an institution where he spent some time after the death of his sister. The boy seems to hate and even fear the nanny and soon we are presented the mystery. What really happened to the girl? The boy seems convinced that the nanny killed her, but everyone else think the boy was the reason for the death. With his quite unusual pranks no one takes the boy seriously as after all the nanny is a depictment of good and honesty. The first hour of the movie is quite slow paced and it looses it's touch once and a while, but the last 30 minutes are very proper surreal thriller at it's best. Nicely twisted story that would have worked a bit better with a better pacing. The cast is quite great so even when it gets boring there's something to keep the interest up. Far from a masterpiece, but definitely well worth watching. The picture quality was quite good and as before there's no subtitles but this time there's a commentary by Jimmy Sangster on the disk.
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